Posts Tagged ‘diesel’

Volkswagen’s dirty diesel scandal has mainly been on their 2.0 TDI motor. We have heard that their 3.0L V6 diesel motor was also being investigated for having a cheat software installed. Specifically, vehicles using the company’s 3.0L diesel motor has been installed with a software that turns off emission control equipment after a predetermined period of time.

So far, the 3.0L diesel engines are not part of the larger recall and buy back program which recently got approved and solidified at Volkswagen. That program is restricted to their 2.0L diesel motor only. How customers will receive compensation for this scandal is yet to be determined as Volkswagen will need to come up with a fix and recall plan for those impacted vehicles as well.

Ever since the emission scandal hit the news from Volkswagen, diesel sales in North America has dropped dramatically and emission regulations have become even more tightly scrutinized by the Environmental Protection Agency on any diesel vehicle approved to be sold in the US. One of the cars which has been greatly delayed by testing and red tape is BMW’s 2017 diesel. The EPA required BMW to pass rigorous testing in order for their car to be given a clean OK for sales in the US. This is just a hint at what’s more to come with the diesel industry as a whole in the US.

Any diesel vehicle being manufactured over seas and shipped into the US for sales will go through the stringent testing set forth by the EPA. The next on the list will be Mercedes’ 2017 diesel vehicles which are still going through the regulator’s testing process. Volkswagen, the company that started it all, still has a stop sale on their 2016 diesel vehicles because they can’t get them to pass the emission standards.

Mazda has always been a company that veers away from trend and sometimes likes to go against the grain to make themselves stand apart. Take their rotary engines that were the mainstay in the RX7 lineup and eventually made its way into the RX8. So it probably doesn’t come to anyone surprise that Masamichi Kogai, Mazda’s top dog in the US, stated that the company will continue to focus energy in putting out a diesel powered vehicle for the US market.

With the fall out of diesel due to the emission scandal at Volkswagen last year, the diesel market has taken a huge hit in less than 12 months time, and even Volkswagen themselves has stated that diesels will not be in their future business plan. No one can tell if this is a brilliant move to capture a market that no one wants to support, or if this will be a terrible strategic move, but all we know is Mazda doesn’t like the follow trends and it has worked for them in the past.

The struggle Mazda currently faces is producing a diesel engine that meets all emission regulator standards. Similar to what other automakers faced, the challenge is to produce an engine that has clean emissions, good fuel economy, has good performance levels, and still manage to do all that without the use of an exhaust after treatment system.

This certainly isn’t shocking news coming from the automaker that they will focus less of it’s energy in the diesel market moving forward. With the diesel scandal that sent shockwaves through the automotive industry, Volkswagen has been on the mend with their company brand since the fallout.

Since last September, Volkswagen has faced a stop sale on all 2.0L diesel vehicles, and have had issues with their 3.0L diesel engines as well. What the company has started to do is beef up their branding and marketing around electric vehicles. Similar to how they brought up the image of clean diesel with a racing series, the company is looking at supporting an EV racing series to bring electric vehicles to the forefront. For now, VW will still sell diesel cars from 2017 through 2019 as long as regulators give them the OK to start sale again. The reality is that diesels as an industry is so tainted that it might not ever recover.

Customers have been waiting patiently for the official fix notice to come from Volkswagen. The automaker is still in the works with regulators on the details of the repairs needed on their 2.0L TDI diesel motors to bring them into compliance. However, recent news on the projected repair plans is stating that even when the cars are repaired by Volkswagen they will still not comply with clean air laws.

The planned fix apparently will only reduce the over pollution by the 2.0L diesel by approximately 80 to 90 percent which gets the vehicles near CARB requirements, but that’s still not officially considered compliant. What’s more is that the regulator seems to be OK with it. According to Daniel Becker, Director of the Safe Climate Campaign, “For reasons they didn’t state, they’re allowing fixed vehicles to not be fixed, but to allow vehicles to emit twice as much pollution as they otherwise would allow.”

Some may recall that Volkswagen’s 2.0L diesel engine wasn’t the only motor in the company’s lineup that was misleading emission regulators. Volkswagen 3.0L diesel motors found in Audis and Porsches were also part of the emission scandal. Recently, Volkswagen submitted a recall to regulators but the solution was far from acceptable according the the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

As CARB put it, “VW‘s and Audi’s submissions are incomplete, substantially deficient, and fall far short of meeting the legal requirements to return these vehicles to the claimed certified configuration,” Currently, vehicles built between 2009 and 2016 which use the 3.0L diesel engine is affected. If VW doesn’t come up with a plan that satisfied regulators, they may be forced to purchase the vehicles back from customers.

With details surrounding Volkswagen’s $10 billion settlement which recently surfaced, it’s gotten the attention of customers who have been affecting waiting eagerly to determine what kind of compensation they will be receiving. Myself included, it’s less so about the compensation, and more so about having a clear picture of what options we will have infront of us to make a decision on our diesel vehicle.

In the current state, customers are left hanging time and time again as Volkswagen and regulators continue to battle out a solution. The most recent report is stating that Volkswagen will be paying out anywhere between $1,000 and $7,000 to diesel owners, depending on things like year, mileage and condition of the vehicle. This will be in addition to providing a fix or buy back option on the affected vehicle.

All of these details are still speculation until an official release of the deal comes out between regulators and Volkswagen. At that point, Canadian customers will wait to see what path Volkswagen Canada will go down for their customers.

Customers who own a 2.0L TDI Volkswagen have been patiently waiting for the automaker to officially come out with their plan to fix their cars. Rumors have been swirling since April when loose details from the automaker came out reporting that their may be a fix or buy back plan as well as a compensation package for customers. Now, nearing the regulators demanded final date for Volkswagen to report on a solution, there is another bus circulating around a supposed $10 billion plan to fix half-a-million cheating diesel cars in the U.S.

All official solutions from Volkswagen will require both the EPA and CARB to approve of the plan. Volkswagen is all ready to fork over $6.5 billion to car owners and $3.5 billion to the U.S. government and California regulators in fines. With the currently proposed plan, Volkswagen will give the option to customers to have their non compliant vehicles repaired. According to calculations, it would take approximately 2 years for all the repairs to be completed, if Volkswagen can even get to all 482,000 affected cars in the US.

Opel CEO has come out and refuted all allegations that the company is using illegal emission defeat devices. As allegations continues to come, this time from the environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DU), the German media is demanding Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann to restate the company’s stance on the illegal devices. The reason why Opel has to say it again is unclear except for the fact that this is just a media circus.

To appease public and press, Opel CEO came out to say again “we at Opel do not have any illegal software. Our engines are in line with the legal requirements. We anticipate the authorities to share this point of view.”

BMW’s new diesel engine makes a massive 400hp and even greater amounts of torque at 560lb/ft. The engine is a 3.0L 6 cylinder engine but it pack in four turbos which is BMW’s proprietary TwinPower Turbo technology. The turbos perform in multi stage and is able to produce fuel economy in the 48-49mpg range. When packed into the 750 big body car, the motor can still generate a 100km/h sprint at just 4.7 seconds.

Managing fuel economy was accomplished by utilizing new engine manufacturing processes and technology which allows the engine to operate more efficiently. An example of that is utilizing low-friction coatings on the cylinder walls and pistons made from aluminum and silicon to aid in the increase in fuel economy.